Introduction

Hostility toward Japanese immigrants perpetuated the image that the Japanese were part of a larger Asian "yellow peril", which threatened to permeate the western United States and threaten the economic prosperity of non-Asian, U.S. born Americans. These immigrants were viewed as outsiders, neither able nor willing to blend in or assimilate into American society. Immigration laws and government-sanctioned economic discrimination weakened the political power of Japanese immigrants.

This campaign post from 1936, for example, illustrates the desire by many white Americans to keeps Asian immigrants out of the United States. The ad supports the California senator James D. Phelan, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1936.As this campaign advertisement shows, Phelan is dedicated to “finishing the work” to “stop the SILENT INVASION.” Notice the imagery: A white hand grasping the arm of a dark, seemingly demon-like hand of an Asian immigrant. The Asian’s hand is trying to grasp the state of California , but the white hand, with its arm decked in patriotic American colors, steps in to defend the state

The racist attitudes that fueled anti-Japanese sentiment and propaganda are part of a larger cultural development of racism in American history. Beginning with the Naturalization Act of 1790, racial identity increasingly became the measurement of eligibility for citizenship. Anti-Japanese sentiment stems from broader anti-Asian attitudes developed in the 19th century. Legal barriers to citizenship inevitably reinforced racist attitudes in social and economic spheres.